The holiday season’s guilty pleasure: The Guilt Trip’

‘Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable,” said Jane Austen.

Well, I always hate to disagree with the usually astute Miss Austen, but sometimes, surprises provide a lot of pleasure and no inconvenience at all.

Take, for instance, the new Barbra Streisand/Seth Rogan comedy, “The Guilt Trip.” Box-office and reviews have been middling. But — surprise! — the movie turns out to be not nearly as bad as the worst reviews proclaim, or the trailers indicate. Indeed, this modest (and modestly budgeted) movie is considerably more charming than the most deadly reviews insist.

There’s nothing groundbreaking here. This is a minor film, in the manner of some past Streisand comedies, such as “For Pete’s Sake” or “The Main Event.” Nobody’s going to begin a tribute reel to Streisand with anything from “The Guilt Trip.” But a grand film was not in the grand design. Barbra knew it. Her co-star Rogan (to whom I am usually indifferent) knew it, and director Anne Fletcher knew it. This is cozy cinematic comfort food; a mother-and-son road trip in which bridges are mended and a few built along the way.

The mistake of “The Guilt Trip” is not so much anything in the film itself, but rather the timing of its release. Christmas season, with its ultra-big, ultra-violent, ultra-unrealistic blockbusters was no time in which to shoehorn this small offering. It screams for a Mother’s Day release. Did director Fletcher (or Barbra) or Paramount Pictures decide that was too obvious? If so, too bad. Because what is being lost on weary end-of-the-year audiences is an appealing Mr. Rogen, and a truly charming, relaxed, and humorous Miss Streisand. The script doesn’t knock you out, the visuals are pedestrian.But this matters very little. In fact, I found the old-fashioned look of it to be rather soothing, in face of relentless CGI and spectacle.

“The Guilt Trip” is really all about the chemistry between Barbra and Seth. Yeah, I know — it seems like it couldn’t possibly work, but it does. And it does so without anything audiences might have come to expect of either star. Rogen doesn’t indulge his wacky gross-out side, and Streisand delivers a far finer-grained performance than in the hugely popular “Fockers” movies. What accounts for her unstrained demeanor I cannot say. She is certainly always better when she doesn’t burden herself with producing or directing chores.